Digital Preservation at the LOC

The Digital Preservation Blog on the Library of Congress website posted yesterday about a presentation on the National Agenda for Digital Stewardship and on using the Levels of Digital Preservation (1 page pdf) that have been developed by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance. The National Agenda integrates the perspective of dozens of experts and hundreds of institutions to provide funders and executive decision‐makers insight into emerging technological trends, gaps in digital stewardship capacity, and key areas for funding, research and development. The Levels of Digital Preservation is a tiered set of recommendations for how organizations should begin to build or enhance their digital preservation activities. It is intended to be a relatively easy-to-use set of guidelines useful not only for those just beginning to think about preserving their digital assets, but also for institutions planning the next steps in enhancing their existing digital preservation systems and workflows.
The LOC also has a helpful webpage on "Personal Archiving: Preserving Your Digital Memories" with basic information about best practices for saving your digital photos, audio, video, email, and records.

Replacing Windows XP

For anyone who has a computer that still uses the Windows XP operating system: an interesting article in PC World, titled "Don't Waste Your Money trying to upgrade your Windows XP PC". The author says that basically even IF your computer meets the minimum system requirements for Windows 7 or Windows 8, you are still better off just buying a new computer.
And while you're thinking about XP, here's an interesting little newslet about XP's default wallpaper, called "Bliss"...which is an actual, unretouched, unphotoshopped photograph taken by photographer Charles O'Rear in Pittsburgh  Napa Valley.

The Flipped Classroom

Last week there was an interesting post on the Chronicle's Wired Campus blog about flipped learning and the flipped classroom, ideas that are slowly making their way into law school education.  This week Robert Talbert, the educator who wrote the post, has another post  on the topic - because the original post elicited a great deal of commentary.  Most of which made him angry.
It's interesting and points to a divide in faculty attitude towards students.  

April Fool's: funny federal publications

The GPO's Government Book Talk blog had an April Fool's Day post listing the "top ten" funny titles of federal documents. OK, they're only moderately funny.  But still. They're trying.  

NEW database: the Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926

The Barco Law Library now has access to "The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926", a dataqbase that provides digital images on every page of 22,000 legal treatises on US and British law published from 1800 through 1926. Full-text searching on more than 10 million pages provides researchers access to critical legal history in ways not previously possible.

New HeinOnline library: Women and the Law

HeinOnline has announced a new library in its collection: Women and the Law (Peggy), a collection that brings together books, biographies and periodicals dedicated to women’s roles in society and the law. This unique collection of materials provides a platform to research the progression of women’s roles and rights in society over the past 200 years. Also included are more than 70 titles from Emory University Law School’s Feminism and Legal Theory Project which provide a platform to view the effect of law and culture on the female gender.

Business Intelligence Resources

The Law Library Resource Exchange (LLRX.com) has published a portal to business resources this week. Titled Business Intelligence Online Resources, it has annotated links to free content and subscription content. The free content includes facts collected by government agencies, news in various forms and categories, consumer opinions, technology guidance, professional standards, biographical information, and much more. The subscription content tends to be specialized directories and people finders.

ProQuest Congressional Webinars: Cross Search

Cross Search is a new feature on ProQuest Congressional. It’s all about context: Cross Search ties existing newspaper and historic newspaper subscriptions with Congressional content. So it puts the government documents in context of what the newspapers were saying about the event at the time. With cross search, users can see newspaper articles about government scandals (such as Teapot Dome, Watergate, and Iran-Contra), wars (the Civil War, the Philippine Insurrection, and Vietnam) and disasters (including the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, or the Titanic sinking).
ProQuest is hosting 4 webinars to show how this feature can be used. Each webinar has a slightly different focus (and you can attend more than one). The first is Monday March 31, 2014, at 1 pm eastern when product manager Andrew Laas will talk about something near and dear to his heart, meat regulations. Description: Introducing Congressional Cross-Search - where we highlight the new ability to search from Congressional to the historic newspaper collections. This session, the Meat Inspection Act of 1906: from The Jungle to Inspection Regulations, will look at the materials in ProQuest Congressional and the Executive Branch Documents and review the materials there, and also look at how the cross-search with the newspaper articles of the day adds context for users.
ProQuest has some Legislative Insight and Executive Branch Documents webinars coming, as well. Beginning in May, we also have the popular series, Legislative Histories for summer interns especially for those law students with summer internships. There is a complete listing on the proquest calendar. 

2014 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction accepting entries

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill A Mockingbird, and to honor former Alabama law student and author Harper Lee, The University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal partnered together to create the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction in 2010. The prize, authorized by Ms. Lee, is given annually to a book-length work of fiction, published in the preceding year, that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change. Past winners include The Confession by John Grisham, The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly, and Havana Requiem by Paul Goldstein. The 2014 prize will be awarded in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 28, in conjunction with the Library of Congress National Book Festival. The winner will receive a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird signed by Harper Lee. The 2014 Harper Lee Prize Selection Committee will choose three finalists, who will be announced in May 2014. The public will be invited to vote on the finalists on the ABA Journal website.  The deadline for entries is April 7, 2014 - the entry form and details are online. 

Interesting librarian job...

Harvard’s rare books library is hiring a Wikipedian-in-Residence. They are looking for someone who can serve as a kind of liaison between Wikipedia and the academic, cultural, and intellectual institutions whose source material its entries rely on. In this case, Harvard. The Wikipedian in Residence will, according to the job announcement, help to "expand coverage on Wikipedia of topics relevant to Houghton collections." He or she will add sources for existing Wikipedia pages and create new pages "on notable topics." The person will also "provide appropriate formatting and metadata (and OCR cleanup in the case of texts) to upload public domain content to Wikimedia and Wikisource, and facilitate the use of such materials by other Wikipedia users."

hat tip: Sallie Smith

Women don't cite themselves as frequently as men

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting report showing that "even as citation rates become a key measure of productivity, 
women don’t refer to their own research nearly as often as men do." An analysis of 60 years of JSTOR articles shows that men are 56% more likely to cite their own scholarly work - and over the past decade, the figure is considerably higher, with men citing themselves 64$ more.

"Type Ahead" on Westlaw

Recently, WestlawNext improved a current tool, type ahead, to assist with finding cases and dockets. type ahead begins to display suggestions after the third character you type in the global search box. Begin typing a party name or citation to find a case. Or, type a party name or docket number to find a docket. Type ahead displays the top five results for content type, case and docket. Type ahead’s suggestions become more refined as additional characters are added. Type ahead also highlights the characters you have entered in the global search box to help you quickly identify your case or docket. 

Is there a "Hysterias R Us" legal lemming movement?

The ABAJournal reports on an article by René Reich-Graefe of Western New England Law School titled "Keep Calm and Carry On" (the link is to SSRN). In the article Prof. Graefe criticizes the panicked reporting about a lack of jobs for law school graduates, which he attributes to “misleading math” and “reckless logic”. Rather, he says, "Over the next two decades, the legal profession market is moving statistically into the direction of almost guaranteed legal employment for all law school graduates".

Blended Learning & Flipped Classroom article

Colleague  Rich McCue of the University of Victoria law library has published a thoughtful and interesting article titled Does a Blended Learning, Flipped Classroom Pedagogy Help Information Literacy Students in the Long Term Adoption of Research Skills?   He takes a comprehensive look at  flipped classroom pedagogy, how it may be used and the need for more studies on how it works in different disciplines. 

New: Qualitative Data Repository

There's an interesting article in the Chronicle about a new data repository called QDR, which stands for Qualitative Data Repository. Headquartered at Syracuse University, QDR) is a dedicated archive for storing and sharing digital data (and accompanying documentation) generated or collected through qualitative and multi-method research in the social sciences. QDR provides search tools to facilitate the discovery of data, and also serves as a portal to material beyond its own holdings, with links to U.S. and international archives. QDR offers a range of guidance and resources to facilitate and encourage the storing and sharing of data, and to help scholars who engage in qualitative and multi-method research to effectively use archived qualitative data. The site is currently in Beta mode, and registration is currently free for individuals from educational institutions.

2013 report on the Federal Courts

The Administrative Office of the United States Courts has just released the 2013 Judicial Business of the U.S. Courts, an in-depth look at the federal court caseload for 2013. 2013 saw an increase in the district court caseload and in the number of persons under supervised release.Filings in the courts of appeals and bankruptcy courts fell in FY 2013. The report describes some factors at play in the increase and decrease in caseloads nationwide, and includes statistical tables by type of case, offense, and type of court. Sections address the probation and pretrial services system and other components of the federal Judiciary.  

New book on the Serial Set

Have you ever wondered about what, exactly, is in the US Congressional Serial Set? The United States Congressional Serial Set began in 1817 as the official collection of reports and documents of the United States Congress. Now Andrea Sevetson has edited a new book titled "The Serial Set: Its Make-up and Content", which should answer all your questions. It is published by ProQuest, and all proceeds will be donated to GODORT, the Gov Docs group of the American Library Association. You can view a pdf of the Table of Contents online.

Openlaws EU project

This project comes recommended as "one to watch" from the Legal Information Institute: openlaws.eu aims at opening access to existing legal information systems and proactively involving and integrating our target groups, i.e. communities of individuals and businesses, legal professionals and public bodies. Open innovation, mass customization, big data analysis, social features and social networks are already highly successful in other markets and we want to introduce them in the legal domain on a European scale. Based on open data, open source software and open innovation principles we are adding a “social layer” to the existing “institutional layer” of legal information systems.

Constitute: the World's Constitutions

Constitute: The World’s Constitutions to Read, Search and Compare is a website offering access to the world’s constitutions that users can systematically compare them across a broad set of topics — using a modern, clean interface. The website, built by the Comparative Constitutions Project, has tagged passages of each constitution with a topic — e.g., “right to privacy” or “duty to pay taxes” — so you can quickly find relevant excerpts on a particular subject, no matter how they are worded. You can browse the 300+ topics in the expandable list on the left of the page, or see suggested topics while typing in the search bar (which also lets you perform free-text queries). You can also limit your results by country or by date.
The Comparative Constitutions Project  is directed by Zachary Elkins (University of Texas, Department of Government), Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago, Law School), and James Melton (University College London), in cooperation with the Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois. The project is supported by the National Science Foundation

Historical Statutes on Westlaw

Legal research often requires us to find prior versions  laws. Westlaw's Legal Solutions Blog recently posted a helpful tip on finding historical statutes in Westlaw. The tip explains several methods for browsing  historical versions of federal or state statutes.  Each  method for browsing will bring you to a Statutes Annotated – Historical page where you will see links to the individual years that are available.  

Law 360 now in Lexis Advance

Lexis Advance updates last week include the addition of Law 360 to our law school accounts. Law360® is a current-awareness tool providing recent breaking news in over 30 practice areas. According to their publicity, "It is the only news source that covers the entire spectrum of practice areas every single business day". The Lexis website provides instructions for setting up Law 360 email alerts using your Lexis Advance account.

PacerPro provides easier access to PACER dockets

A free service, PacerPro helps you find and manage Federal Court cases and documents. However, you need to have a PACER account to use it.  If you find the PACER interface complicated, difficult to use, confusing... you will be a fan of PacerPro, which offers all these features that PACER lacks:

• Simultaneous searches. (Search across one or more district courts in real time.) 
• Aggregated results. (Say goodbye to wading through multiple web pages to see complete results. )
• One-click download. (Download the entire docket with a single click.) 
• Freebies. (Previously downloaded documents are free). 
• Automatic PDF labeling. (PacerPro saves you time by sensibly labeling your documents. )
• Bookmarking. (Once you’ve found a case on PacerPro, you’ll never need to search for it again.) 
• One-click docket update. 
• Advanced docket search tools. (Locate the right record with robust search options, including boolean and proximity searching.)

You will need to provide your email address and PACER account information, and then you are ready to go. Note that you will still be charged PACER fees for the documents you download, via your PACER account. 

Telephone Interpreting Program in the US Courts

The Telephone Interpreting Program (TIP) provides remote interpretation for court proceedings where certified or highly qualified court interpreters are not reasonably available locally. The Third Branch News on the website of the United States Courts has an interesting article about the program, noting that From 2001-2013, fifty-six U.S. district courts in 102 locations used TIP for approximately 42,000 events, saving an estimated $14 million for the Judiciary in travel and contract costs. Since 2009, the average number of events per year has been approximately 3,900, for an estimated yearly savings of over $1.5 million. The story gives the history of the program and you can listen to an audio clip and watch a video about telephone interpreting in the federal courts.

HeinOnline and Fastcase

Caselaw from Fastcase is now integrated into our HeinOnline content.   Which means that Hein now provides federal and state case law powered by Fastcase to HeinOnline subscribers via inline hyperlinks, along with providing the option to retrieve case law by citation. Fastcase is a legal research resource that is competing with the big legal databases by providing legal content with more flexible subscription terms and pricing. A number of Bar associations provide Fastcase to their members because it is a useful service for smaller and solo law firms.
In addition, HeinOnline announced today that future plans include a "Fastcase Premium" option which will have additional Fastcase and case law features, including searching and ScholarCheck enhancements, integrated.  Furthermore, Hein is in the process of working with Fastcase to integrate both databases to create a seamless transition between the two to "create the best possible research experience". 

Interlibrary eBook lending

There's an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Library Consortium Tests Interlibrary Loans of e-Books".  As the title suggests, it's about the problems that libraries have with lending eBooks via Interlibrary loan, something that isn't currently allowed because of technical and licensing restrictions.  But a pilot project called Occam’s Reader will test software custom-built to make it both easy and secure for libraries to share e-book files while, they hope, keeping publishers happy. The software was developed by Texas Tech University and the University of Hawaii- Manoa, and is being tested by a consortium of 33 academic libraries called the Greater Western Library Alliance. Springer publishing is allowing their ebooks to be involved in the test.

Yale Law Library online exhibit: 350 Years of Rebellious Lawyering

In conjunction with the 20th Annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference at the Yale Law School, the Law Library's Rare Book Collection has a new exhibit, "350 Years of Rebellious Lawyering." The exhibit showcases nine historic examples of public interest lawyering, ranging in time from William Leach's The Bribe-Takers of Jury-Men Partiall, Dishonest, and Ignorant Discovered and Abolished (London, 1652) to Mr. Natural in Bailed Out, an underground comic published by Boston's Legal Defense Group in 1971. Also are on display is Clarence Darrow's 1920 defense of Communist labor organizers, a notorious 1854 fugitive slave trial, and Thomas Pearce's The Poor Man's Lawyer (1755). The exhibit was curated by rare book librarian Mike Widener and is available on the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog.

Gale's Making of Modern Law

The Barco Law Library has trial access to six databases from Gale's Making of Modern Law collection.  The trial access is available for students, faculty and staff of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law through April 25.  Access is via IP range, which means you need to be in the Barco Law Building to use these database trials.  The databases are:

MAKING OF MODERN LAW FOREIGN PRIMARY SOURCES PART 1
Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative, and International Law, c. 1600-1926
MAKING OF MODERN LAW: LEGAL TREATISES 1800-1926 US & UK MODULES
MAKING OF MODERN LAW: PRIMARY SOURCES, 1620-1926
MAKING OF MODERN LAW: PRMARY SOURCES II, 1763-1970
MAKING OF MODERN LAW: TRIALS 1600-1926 DIGITAL ARCHIVE
For a description of the content of each database, click on the link è click the Proceed button è click the “Help” link located in the center of the black logo bar at the top of the page è click the link to “Product Description”.  

Statistical DataSets and Ready Reference

Our subscription and the links to Statistical Datasets have been updated to reflect that the database is now owned by a company called Data-Planet.  It is available campus-wide via IP address. 
You may recall that Statistical Datasets, prreviously owned by Lexis and then ProQuest, is a very complex database with a sophisticated interface.  Data-Planet has done a nice job of providing a set of libguides to help navigate.
Another helpful thing that Data-Planet has done is to create a separate database for us to use called Statistical Ready Reference, also available campus-wide. They have created a series of datasets (191 page pdf)  that may be frequently used by reference librarians with accompanying charts and graphs for quick access. They also provide libguides for Statistical Ready Reference. 

Lexis Advance updated this week

Wecome news for law school users: LexisNexis has "rolled out" a major update to Lexis Advance. There's no info on precisely what changes were made, but one improvement is that your searches will no longer get "stuck" in a particular database. Law 360 should now be included in your results when you search "news". There is also a new "Faculty Tip of the Week" program: For 8 weeks, beginning February 10, a weekly email will link you to a 1-2 minute faculty video tip on an important resource or tool on Lexis Advance, including Verdict & Settlement Analyzer, Law360, Legal Issue trail, and more…If you view all 8 short videos you will receive a $25.00 Amazon.com gift card.

Sell your privacy?

Technology Review reports on a startup called Datacoup that is running a beta trial in which people can earn $8 a month for allowing access to their personal data, including not only Facebook etc. data but also information on credit card purchasing.  The company hopes that the information they collect can be especially useful to advertisers because few data providers can combine traces of a person’s online activity with a record of their spending activity.

Google Glass at Yale library

The Yale University Bass Library has announced that Google Glass is now available for faculty and student groups to borrow.  The Glass is being provided in cooperation with Yale's Instructional Technology Group and the Student Technology Collaborative as a joint program to develop and use Glass in a library and classroom setting. Google Glass, of course, is a wearable computer with an augmented reality visual display that is being developed by Google[x], Google’s experimental lab. Yale Library IT is also working to help develop library-specific uses for the new technology, such as a “first-person scanner” Scan and Deliver application which would allow library staff to fulfill patron scanning requests directly from the library stacks, as well as using Google Glass to assist library patrons with disabilities.

New database: National Geographic Archive

Thanks to the University Library System we now have access to Cover to cover access to National Geographic magazine from 1888-1994.  You can browse all the magazines by date, or there is an excellent search facility. The magazines have the beautiful photos for which Nat Geo is justifiably famous, and also include all the map inserts that have come with the magazine over the years. Watch out, it can be a serious time-suck. 

Bloomberg Law and SCOTUSblog’s Supreme Court Challenge

BloombergLaw and SCOTUSblog have announced the third annual Supreme Court Challenge. The object of the competition is to predict how the Supreme Court will decide 6 merits cases and six cert. petitions in April 2014. Students can form teams and compete against other law students around the country. First prize is $3500, with an additional $1,500 if the team also beats the experts at SCOTUSblog. Second Prize is #2500, 3rd is $1500, and the top team in each region will receive $200. You must register for the competition by March 22, 2014.

GPO AND LOC INCREASE TRANSPARENTCY TO CONGRESSIONAL INFORMATION

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has partnered with the Library of Congress (LOC) to make House of Representatives bill summaries available in XML format for bulk data download from GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys). Bill summaries are prepared by the LOC’s Congressional Research Service and describe the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation. They also detail the effects the legislative text may have on current law and Federal programs. The bill summaries are part of FDsys’ Bulk Data repository starting with the 113th Congress. Making House bill summaries available in XML permits data to be reused and repurposed for mobile web applications, data mashups, and other analytical tools by third party providers, which contributes to openness and transparency in Government. GPO already makes House bills as well as the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and other documents from the executive branch available in XML format for bulk data download. You can view the House bill summaries on FDsys here.

Law Library of Congress Report on Bitcoin virtual currency

Foreign law specialists and analysts at the Law Library of Congress recently completed a report that highlights the emerging global discussion around approaches to regulating virtual currencies, particularly Bitcoin. The report, titled "Regulation of Bitcoin in Selected Jurisdictions" (25 page pdf), surveys 40 government jurisdictions and the European Union to compare Bitcoin regulation. The report notes that "Of the countries surveyed, only a very few, notably China and Brazil, have specific regulations applicable to bitcoin use..." and that "Bitcoin system’s possible impact on national currencies, its potential for criminal misuse, and the implications of its use for taxation” concerns many governments. The LLOC's report concludes that “Overall, the findings of this report reveal that the debate over how to deal with this new virtual currency is still in its infancy.”

Law Library of Congress offers webinar on Congress.gov

The Law Library of Congress is offering a webinar about Congress.gov on Tuesday March 11, 2014 and again on Thursday May 15, 2014.  Congress.gov is, of course, the successor to Thomas.gov, the federal government's website for all information about what's going on in Congress. The webinar will highlight new features of Congress.gov. The webinar is free but you need to register using an online form.  

Yelp fingerpointing lawsuits result in no damages for either side

You may have heard about the Yelp defamation lawsuit. A woman in Virginia wrote a scathing review of her home contractor on Yelp and Angie's List. The contractor sued for defamation and asked for an injunction against past and future statements from the woman. The woman accused the contractor of defamation in online posts responding to her reviews. And so on.
Well, a jury in Fairfax County, Virginia recently returned a verdict on the case: the two had defamed each other but neither would get a cent in damages.  The case has received lots of attention in the media, you can read the full story in the Washington Post.  

Supreme Court Records and Briefs 1832-1978

The Barco Law Library has added a new database to our collection.  Supreme Court Records and Briefs 1832-1978 is part of the Making of Modern Law series.  contains official court filings from the final years of the court’s fourth chief justice, John Marshall, through the first 10 years of the court’s 15th chief justice, Warren Earl Burger. Some cases consist of a few documents, while others may include dozens of documents. The collection does not include the Court’s rulings, opinions or decisions, but focuses on the legal documents and records presented to the court. includes famous briefs written by leading attorneys (many who later became judges and associates of the Court) such as Louis D. Brandeis, Abe Fortas, Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It also contains briefs written by institutions, corporations, and advocacy groups, including NAACP, the ACLU and The New York Times, It covers cases whose landmark decisions have become an essential part of American law, politics and history including Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade.

Early help with your digital New Year's resolutions

If your plans/hopes for 2014 include getting some control over your digital stuff,  two articles published today can help. Does this sound familiar: "most people have a growing inventory of storage sitting around their homes. Typically there’s a drawer of 1GB and 2GB USB flash drives—it seemed like a lot of space at the time—camera cards, old CDs and DVDs, and usually a few external drives. What’s on those drives? Can they still be read? Are they safe to throw out?"  Note that the author doesn't even mention the piles of floppy disks stuck on a shelf somewhere.  In "How to Cope with an Expanding Data Closet", from MIT Technology Review, Simson Garfinkel gives extensive advice on how to "create your own personal storage management plan" and organize all that data.  
Meanwhile, ProfHacker, a blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education, has a post titled "Lighten Your Inbox in 10 Minutes with Unroll.Me".  I confess I haven't had time to test it out yet, but just the thought of a service that helps cope with the barrage of daily emails makes me feel hopeful.
Here's to a neatly organized 2014.

Vendors of legal research databases: who bought whom in 2013

Greg Lambert at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog has an interesting post titled "Review of 2013 Legal Research Vendors' Mergers, Acquisitions and Partnerships".  Thanks, Greg. 

The legal aspects of drones

There's been a lot about drones in the news lately.  And just in time, CALI has a new lesson titled "Drones: Unmanned Aircraft Systems" which explores the legal aspects of drones in both military and civilian settings. This lesson looks at the following legal issues relating to the use of a UAS:
1. FAA proposed and current regulations;
2. Military uses and the ethics of such use. Military uses include using drones as a decoy, or as a target simulating enemy aircraft, or in reconnaissance providing battlefield intelligence, or in combat attacking or killing people;
3. Law enforcement use and the search and seizure implications; and
4. Other commercial purposes and privacy considerations.
Note: you will need to be registered for a CALI account before taking the lesson. 

25 years of PACER

The US Courts are hailing the 25th anniversary of the PACER electronic filing and docketing system.  "In September 1988, the Judicial Conference of the United States approved a new way of opening information to the public, through a service known as PACER—Public Access to Court Electronic Records." You can read all about the history of PACER and the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) on the US Courts website, complete with photographs. The article concludes: "User surveys in 2009 and 2012 showed strong and growing user satisfaction with PACER and CM/ECF, but efforts continue to build on the first quarter-century’s success. We are in the process of modernizing the CM/ECF system and PACER service, to make it more user-friendly. The biggest challenge—and opportunity—lies in the area of preservation of the electronic dockets and opinions for posterity. Electrons don't age as gracefully as paper. We will need to work closely with the National Archives and the Government Printing Office to ensure that future generations can access this valuable information.”

Printing Questions Answered

It's the time of year when students are doing a lot of printing, and may have questions about campus printing at Pitt.  CSSD has a webpage with all the information they might need. The most common questions about print quota and adding money to your print quota are answered:

Pittsburgh campus students receive 900 print units per semester. Black & white pages are 1 unit each. Color pages are 7 units each. Users can purchase additional units for $0.07 each at the Pay Stations located in any of the Campus Computing Labs. You can check how many pages you have printed at any time. Log in to accounts.pitt.edu, click Manage My Account and click the View quota information link.

Google Scholar amps up features

Google Scholar Blog has announced the launch of Google Scholar Library, a feature that allows a user to "save articles right from the search page, organize them by topic, and use the power of Scholar's full-text search to quickly find just the one you want... with a single click, you can import all the articles in your profile as well as all the articles they cite.". You're able to use "labels" to organize the material you've saved to your library. And Google Scholar's database includes U.S. case law, legal journal articles, and patents, as well as scholarly articles from many other disciplines. You can also save library access links for up to five of your most-used libraries.

Project Management Software

Law Library Tech Talk, a pretty regular online show brought to you by several geekish law profs & librarians, discussed and recommended  some online project management software products yesterday.  These are, in alphabetical order:

1. Asana: "Teamwork without email."
2. Azendoo "We make it easier for people to do their job, to work better, together."
3. Trello "Organize anything, together." 
4. Wrike "Project Management Software that makes your life easier!"

All have free trial options, as well as various levels of pricing.  

Scheduled GPO website maintenance

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) will be performing scheduled maintenance on its Web services this weekend, and many GPO Web services will be unavailable.
Start Time: Saturday, November 23, 2013, 7:00 a.m. EDT * End Time: Sunday, November 24, 2013, 8:00 p.m. EDT
Approximate Duration: 36 hours
 During the maintenance period, Beta.fdlp.gov,  FDLP.gov, FDLP Community, Digitization Projects Registry, Browse Topics, and Ben's Guide will experience downtime. The Catalog of U.S. Government Publications and the Federal Depository Library Directory will not be affected. The GPO says:  "Scheduled maintenance is a necessary and vital aspect of Web services. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation during this time."

GPO assembles publications about JFK

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy was one of the most historic—and horrific— events of the 20th century. In commemoration of this important milestone in our Nation's history, the U.S. Government Printing Office has assembled a number of Official Federal publications that help us reflect on the legacy left by “JFK” in his 1,000 days in office.  These include publications containing the text of his speeches as a Senator, the story of the Peace Corps, and publications that tell about US involvement in the Cold War.  

The truth abt legal research vendors, irreverently

This 10 minute video succinctly tells the story of electronic legal research in thrall to big vendors.

hat tip: Joe Hodnicki

The Google Books verdict came down yesterday. Google won.

Wow. The use of the full text of tens of millions of books for its online search function is a transformative use and thus Google's mass digitization of those books without authorization from copyright holders constitutes fair use, Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled Nov. 14. The story is all over the news and the full 30-page decision is available in pdf format online. The current citation for the case is Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google Inc., S.D.N.Y., No. 1:05-cv-08136-DC, 1:05-cv-08136, 05-cv-8136, 11/14/13.
PW reports that "After years of fair use legal wrangling, the case wasn’t even close. Chin found Google easily prevailed on three of the four fair use factors, and lost slightly on one."
Libraries are pleased with the decision; the ALA said that "This ruling furthers the purpose of copyright by recognizing that Google’s Book search is a transformative fair use that advances research and learning.”

Considerations before weeding print in favor of digital

Government Documents librarian James Jacobs has posted a reminder on the govdocs website that all libraries should bear in mind as we are pressured to weed our print collections.  He says please take these four things into account:
 1. Do you actually have access to a digital copy? Note, for example, that some documents in the HathiTrust are fully available only to HathiTrust members. http://www.hathitrust.org/help_digital_library#Download
 2. Are the digital copies you expect to rely on complete and accurate? Many are not. See the article in D-Lib: "The Digital-Surrogate Seal ofApproval: a Consumer-oriented Standard." by James A. Jacobs and James R. Jacobs. D-Lib Magazine, 2013, 19(3/4).
 3. Do the digital copies you intend to rely on match the needs of your users? Not all digital copies are created or delivered equally. For example, Have they been OCR'd? Is the OCR text searchable? Can you copy the OCR text? Are numbers in tables preserved in the OCR text? Was the original a large-format or did it contain images, color, fold-outs, maps, etc., and are those as legible and as easy to use as the original? Do your users expect to use digital books in a different way from paper (textual analysis? convert to ebooks? read on tablets? use text-to-voice? etc.) and do the digital copies you intend to rely on meet the needs of your users?
 4. Finally, providing digital copies for enhancing access and use is a good thing, but please do not assume that it is necessarily a good idea to discard paper copies once digital copies are available. Print copies were made to be used in print (size, layout, accessibility, visual context, etc.). Digital copies of those may or may not adequately preserve that same usability and accessibility and few digitization projects take the time to remake the paper into a fully functional digital object designed to be consumed digitally. The preservation of these valuable paper copies will continue to be important unless and until many questions can be adequately addressed (http://freegovinfo.info/node/3961). Discarding paper prematurely, without ensuring the long-term preservation of these historic documents would be contrary to the spirit of the FDLP and would not serve either your constituents or the nation.

Transition to Congress.gov

The Library of Congress has announced that on Nov. 19 the free legislative info website THOMAS.gov will redirect to Congress.gov as Congress.gov transitions into its permanent role as the official site for federal legislative information from the U.S. Congress and related agencies. The site, which launched in beta form last fall and features platform mobility, comprehensive information retrieval and user-friendly presentation, is replacing the nearly 20-year-old THOMAS.gov.

Redesigned RegulationRoom website launched

RegulationRoom - the website operated by the Cornell eRulemaking Initiative (CeRI) and hosted by the Legal Information Institute (LII) - has just launched a completely redesigned version of their website RegulationRoom.org. They have also opened a new discussion about consumer debt collection practices. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is considering new rules for the debt collection industry, and needs feedback on its questions and ideas. CFPB believes debt collection is an important issue for consumers and are taking the first steps to gather information to determine what rules would be appropriate to protect consumers who are subject to debt collection. They would like input from anyone who:

• had an experience with debt collection (good or bad) 
• counsels consumers with overdue debts
• has a business where you do your own account collection or 
• works in the debt collection industry. 

Practical Law Co. on the future of US-EU Safe Harbor for Data

The US-EU Safe Harbor framework is an important cross-border data transfer mechanism that enables certified organizations to transfer personal data from the EU to the US in compliance with European data protection laws. Recently, however, the Safe Harbor's future has been thrown into doubt. Following widespread concern about the US government's covert surveillance programs, European Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding announced in July 2013 a plan to review the Safe Harbor and publish the results before the end of 2013. To learn more about the US-EU Safe Harbor and recent developments affecting its future viability, see the Practical Law Company's assessment on  Privacy & Data Security: The Future of the US-EU Safe Harbor for Data Transfers.

New ULS database: OnePetro

OnePetro is an online library of technical literature for the oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) industry. It contains more than 145,000 documents produced by 18 publishing partners, including the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). It may be useful for our faculty and students who are interested in the law of Marcellus Shale development.
hat tip: Judy Brink, Engineering Library

New free e-resource: Global Health and Human Rights Database

Lawyers Collective and the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University in Washington DC have launched the Global Health and Human Rights Database . The Database is a fully searchable online database of more than 1000 judgments, constitutions and international instruments on the intersection between health and human rights. The Database is the first attempt to comprehensively make available health and human rights law from both common and civil law jurisdictions, and features case law and other legal documents from more than 80 countries and in 25 languages. It also provides 500 plain-language summaries and 200 original translations of case law previously unavailable in English. The Database has been created in collaboration with more than 100 partners from civil society, academia, and legal practice worldwide. An official public launch of the Database was held on 24 October 2013, at the Dag Hammarskjold Library Auditorium at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York.

hat tip: Lyonette Louis-Jacques

Portico e-journal service reaches historic milestone: More than 25 million articles preserved

Portico has announced that it is preserving 25 million journal articles—and counting—through its E-Journal Preservation Service. The articles represent content from more than 287,000 volumes and more than one million journal issues. This is a significant milestone for Portico and the library and publisher community that supports digital preservation. "It is quite remarkable to see the growth in the Portico archive over the last eight years," commented Marilyn Geller, collection management librarian of Lesley University, an early Portico participant. "When it first started, the Portico system was an untested concept. But in the ensuing years, the system has proven successful and the organization has demonstrated that they can be trusted when unforeseen circumstances happen. We couldn't be more pleased with Portico's growth." Read the complete news  release online.

Students are texting in class!

We already know that students are texting in class. Inside Higher Ed reports on a recent study done by a researcher at the University of Nebraska that looks at just how much they are texting.  The results show that Undergraduates reporting using their devices for non-class purposes 11 times a day, on average, compared to 4 times a day for graduate students. Asked why they were using their devices in class, the top answer was texting (86 percent), followed by checking the time (79 percent). e-mail (68 percent), social networking (66 percent), web surfing (38 percent) and games (8 percent).

Decline of Microsoft Windows

Speaking of decline, a post on the Wall Street Journal's new Digits blog projects the continuing decline of Microsoft and its Windows operating system. This is mainly due to the growth of mobile devices that use non-Windows operating systems: Android, iOS/MacOS  and "Other". According to the post, Windows' marketshare will shrink from over 50% in 2010 to a projected 20% in 2017.  

Is Wikipedia in decline?

There's an interesting article in MIT Technology Review titled "The Decline of Wikipedia".  The author takes a close look at how Wikipedia operates and notes that the volunteer workforce that built and maintains the English-lanaguage Wikipedia site is growing smaller.  Why? The author notes that "The main source of those problems is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase participation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage."  He cites a detailed study of Wikipedia by  University of Minnesota, Berkeley & Washington grad students that details various problems with useful graphs and charts. 

New on HeinOnline: citations in articles linked to caselaw

HeinOnline recently announced that case law is now integrated into all HeinOnline content via links to either HeinOnline or Fastcase. What does this mean? If you are reading a law review article in HeinOnline and the author cites a case, the citation will be highlighted in blue, and if you click the citation a new window will open so you can read the case. The case document will be presented in the familiar HeinOnline format so the document delivery is seamless. The federal case coverage includes the judicial opinions of the Supreme Court (1754-present), Federal Circuits (1924-present), Board of Tax Appeals (vols. 1-47), Tax Court Memorandum Decisions (vols. 1-59), U.S. Customs Court (vols. 1-70), Board of Immigration Appeals (1996-present), Federal District Courts (1924- present), and Federal Bankruptcy Courts (1 B.R. 1-present). The state case law covers all fifty states, with nearly half of the states dating back to the 1800s. Coverage for the remaining states dates back to approximately 1950.

Survey: Bluebook

We are currently using the 19th edition of the Bluebook, which means that the 20th is right around the corner. Here's a chance to share your opinions about the BB with the people who are revising it: the editors of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation are about to begin making revisions for the forthcoming Twentieth Edition, and are seeking the help of people who use it. They rely on user input to guide revisions to The Bluebook, and they have composed a survey to get your help so that they can target the revisions to best serve user needs. Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey at www.legalbluebook.com/survey. Surveys must be received by November 8, 2013, in order to be considered for the Twentieth Edition. Comments and suggestions are also welcome through e-mail to editor@legalbluebook.com.

Law Review reform suggested by new study

A hot-off-the-presses new article from the Loyola Law Review (59 Loy. L. Rev. 1) discusses a study that was done by surveying law faculty, law review editors, lawyers and judges about law reviews. The article is titled Do law reviews need reform? A survey of law professors, student editors, attorneys, and judges.
From the article:

"We surveyed law professors, student editors, attorneys, and judges to determine what they think about the current system of law reviews, the need for reforms, and what reforms should be implemented. We received an excellent response to the survey. A total of 1,325 law professors, 338 student editors, 215 attorneys, and 156 judges participated.... Although the present study was exploratory, has limitations, and does not definitively resolve the debate about law reviews; it nonetheless offers support for several important conclusions about them. Law reviews are likely not meeting the needs of attorneys and judges; and law professors believe that they have a capricious, negative effect on their careers. The vast majority of legal professionals and student editors believe that law reviews should be reformed and that the reforms should include blind, peer reviews and more student training. There needs to be more empirical studies about law reviews because authors' opinions about them may not reflect the views of the legal community and many of their assumptions about law reviews may lack empirical support."

Digitizing Einstein

There's news of a cool new digitization project: Princeton University Press is partnering with online publishing platform Tizra to make Albert Einstein's papers available online. The Collected Papers, will contain searchable text, in German and in English translation, for the thousands of pages of Einstein’s work throughout his lifetime. The papers include lectures, research notebooks, interviews, and letters. Nearly 14,000 of Einstein's papers will provide a complete picture of a massive written legacy that ranges from his first work on the special and general theories of relativity and the origins of quantum theory, to expressions of his profound concern with civil liberties, education, Zionism, pacifism, and disarmament.

New Databases from the University Library System

We now have access to Uniworld, the online version of two important business directories: "American Firms Operating in Foreign Countries" and "Foreign Firms Operating in the United States." Uniworld Online provides quick access to high quality contact information for businesses in over 200 countries and 20,000 industries.
Thanks to the Health Sciences Library System, we have online access to DSM-5, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A well-known and heavily used resource, the DSM is a classification of mental disorders with associated criteria designed to facilitate more reliable diagnoses of these disorders.

American Lawyer Media subscription at Barco

The Barco Law Library now has a subscription  to 14 American Lawyer Media (ALM) publications.  These are available via IP range, meaning you can access them at any computer and via the wireless network in the Barco Law Building and the Sennott Square clinic offices. There are links on the Barco Law library databases page.  The list of publications:
1. The National Law Journal provides news and analysis for a national audience of legal professionals, and corporate and government decision makers, from Supreme Court rulings to complex litigation.
 2. The American Lawyer   is the leading daily news source covering legal business, law firms, and lawyers across the U.S. and around the world.
 3. The Legal Intelligencer  As the oldest law journal in the U.S., The Legal Intelligencer takes advantage of 170 years as the expert source of legal information for professionals in Philadelphia, its suburbs and the state of Pennsylvania.
 4. The New York Law Journal (NYLJ) is the largest selling legal daily in the country with the latest news on prosecutors, judges, legislators and law firms, along with in-depth analysis.
 5. The New Jersey Law Journal  has daily news for New Jersey’s practicing attorneys in the nation’s ninth-largest legal market.
 6. The Recorder  is a leading provider of essential California legal news and information, indispensable to the daily practice of California's legal decision-makers.
 7. The Delaware Business Court Insider , a weekly electronic newsletter distributed every Wednesday, will provide the latest news, analysis, case summaries and reporting on developments in Delaware corporate law.
 8. Corporate Counsel has information for the in-house community.
 9. Litigation  is a special report for coverage and analysis of the biggest cases, profiles of successful litigation firms and a review of the year’s highlights and trends. Print is twice a year. Online is daily.
 10. Connecticut Law Tribune is Connecticut’s only weekly newspaper devoted to covering the legal community, giving you the latest developments in Connecticut’s courts, law firms and legislature.
 11. The Daily Report  is the primary source for news about the courts and the business and profession of law for lawyers in metro Atlanta and the state of Georgia.
 12. The Daily Business Review Insider  is designated the official court newspaper by the chief judges of the state judicial circuits in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties and by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
 13. Texas Lawyer  has news for members of the Texas Bar, one of the biggest and most influential bars in the country,
14. Supreme Court Brief features exclusive high court news and analysis from the National Law Journal.

Westlaw Webinars for Faculty

Westlaw has scheduled a series of webinars for faculty during the next couple of months. If you click on the link you will automatically be registered for the webinar.
September 26th Noon Practical Law
October 3rd 2:30 pm Terms & Connectors on WestlawNext 
October 7th 1:00 pm Digests
October 18th 1:00 pm TWEN 101
October 25th 1:00 pm From Classic to Next
October 28th 3:30 pm Alerts
November 1st 2:30 Secondary Sources on WLN
November 8th 1:00 pm WLN Productivity Tools
November 10th 1:00 pm From Classic to Next
November 21st 1:00 pm Advanced TWEN

Thomas transitioning to Congress dot gov

The Library of Congress has announced that starting in November, when you click on a link in Thomas you may be redirected to the up-and-coming Congress.gov; though Thomas will remain accessible from the Congress website through late 2014.
They are also looking for feedback about the site. Starting today through next Monday, September 30 they are doing a more in depth user test. They are looking for people who are interested in Congress and legislation to take 15 minutes to test Congress.gov. with a new test that can be done from your computer anytime and is absolutely anonymous. Your input will help make it a better site for everyone.

New Bloomberg BNA State Tax Law content

The Bloomberg BNA Tax and Accounting Center has been enhanced to include new Excise Tax, Property Tax, and Estates Gifts and Trusts navigators and chart builders that provide detailed state-by-state tax information and allows users to quickly create custom charts and compare state tax details among states. Three State Tax Nexus tools – Corporate Income Tax, Sales & Use Tax, and Trusts Nexus Evaluator Tool – allow faculty and students to create reports to compare company activities to what the states report as nexus-creating contacts. The nexus tools are an excellent way to teach students the importance of nexus in the state tax area. A new State Tax Development Tracker allows tax faculty and students to track and summarize daily state tax developments across a full range of topics.
The Tax and Accounting Center can also be accessed directly from your Bloomberg Law account. 

The U.S. Constitution for iPhone: the pursuit of Appiness

Just in time for the 226th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the Library of Congress has a free iPhone app of the U.S. Constitution: Analysis and Interpretation, aka the Constitution Annotated or CONAN. This is a comprehensive analytical legal treatise prepared by attorneys of the Congressional Research Service. It contains legal analysis and interpretation of the United States Constitution, based primarily on Supreme Court case law. This regularly updated resource is especially useful when researching the constitutional implications of a specific issue or topic. The Featured Topics and Cases page highlights recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that demonstrate pivotal interpretations of the Constitution's provisions.  

New: consumer law treatises online

The Barco Law Library owns the 20 print treatises published by the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC). We now have access, via law school IP range, to the “companion websites” of these treatises. These books are practical guides that can be used by laypeople or attorneys in dealing with a wide range of consumer law issues. They include lots of useful forms and sample documents for pleadings. Check them out at www.nclc.org/ipaccess . To get into the content, use the links in the lefthand menu to go to the title you want, like “Access to Utility Service”. The next page will let you search the content of that title. To see all the contents, click on the “Contents” tab at the top of the page.
 The books are divided into 4 libraries:
 Debtor Rights Library: •Consumer Bankruptcy Law and Practice •Fair Debt Collection •Foreclosures •Repossessions •Student Loan Law •Access to Utility Service
 Credit and Banking Library: •Truth in Lending •Fair Credit Reporting •Mortgage Lending •Consumer Credit Regulation •Consumer Banking and Payments Law •Credit Discrimination
Consumer Litigation Library: •Collection Actions •Consumer Class Actions •Consumer Law Pleadings •Consumer Arbitration Agreements
Deception and Warranties Library: •Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices •Federal Deception Law •Automobile Fraud •Consumer Warranty Law
You can also find these resources by using PittCat, which includes a master record (search for title: “Consumer Law Manuals”) with all the titles and website info.

Law Student Technology Use: fall 2013

Law librarian extraordinaire Rich McCue, at the University of Victoria (British Columbia), surveys incoming law students about their technology use every year. This fall he had a 90% response rate to the survey. Here's what he found (the full report, including graphics, is on his website):

• Phones: 96% of incoming law students own Smart Phones: 54%  iPhones, 31% Android and 11% Blackberry (Blackberry usage is down from 27% two years ago). New law students are primarily using their mobile devices for directions, email, and looking up schedules & contact information. 
• Tablets and eBook ownership have doubled in the past year with 44% of students owning tablet devices or ebook readers, up from 31% last year. However, 64% of students never bring their tablet or ebook reader to school, "probably indicating a preference for laptops for note taking and research, and still heavy reliance on printed text books". 
• When asked if they would use a library run tablet lending program, 53% said they would not use it while 18% said they would use it daily or weekly. 
• Phone communication: 92% of students use Skype for real-time audio/video calls and collaboration. 42% use Apple Facetime and 9% use Google Hangouts. 
• Email: 59% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 22% Outlook.com, and 6% use their university email. 
• Data storage and collaboration: 49% of students use Dropbox, up from 22% last year. 41% use Google drive, up from 33% last year. 15% use Apple iCloud up from 4%. 3% use Microsoft Sky Drive which is unchanged from last year. 
• Social Media: 92% of students use Facebook (down from 97% two years ago), 31% user Twitter, 19% Linked In, 8% Google+ and 3% don’t use online social networks. 
• Laptops: 97% of students own laptops. 57% of laptops are Macs, up from 49% last year. 44% use Windows, down from 48% last year. 68% of students bring their laptops to school regularly & 21% bring them never or rarely. 
• Class Notes: 73% of students use laptops to take class notes, 72% use pen and paper, 3% use tablets and 4% use cell phones. 11% record lecture audio with their laptops or audio recorder.

Anti-bribery & -corruption laws app

New: the AB&C Laws Application is free from the Apple iTunes app store. The app, created by firm Latham & Watkins,is designed to inform users about anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws. about anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws in major jurisdictions around the world, including China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Users can look up the anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws in a covered jurisdiction and find out what constitutes an offense, whether the laws in one country apply outside its borders, how to reduce risk, and what potential punishments are available. The app also includes pop-up windows that define legal terms. hat tip: Law Technology News

2 new libraries from HeinOnline

Two new HeinOnline libraries are now available from Barco Law Library.

• Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law Publications: This collection includes more than 50 publications from the prestigious Parker School of Foreign & Comparative Law at Columbia Law School. View publications such as the 22-volume set, A Bibliography on Foreign and Comparative Law. Book and Articles in English by Charles Szladits, along with An Introduction to the Legal System of the United States by E. Allan Farnsworth, among various others. A more detailed description of the content is on HeinOnline (4 page pdf). 
• Immigration Law & Policy in the U.S.: This monumental collection is a compilation of the most important historical documents and legislation related to immigration in the United States as well as current hearings, debates and recent developments in immigration law. This first comprehensive database includes BIA Precedent Decisions, legislative histories, law and policy titles, extradition titles, scholarly articles, an extensive bibliography, and other related works. A more detailed description of the content is on HeinOnline (4 page pdf). 

Google enters the MOOC arena

There's an interesting article today in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Google and edX Create a MOOC Site for the Rest of Us".  MOOC, of course, stands for Massive Open Online Courses. It seems that Google is partnering with a nonprofit company founded by MIT and Harvard called edX and together they have created a website called MOOC.org .  The site will provide a platform allowing "any academic institution, business, and individual to create and host online courses,” according to the article. In an interview, Anant Agarwal, president of edX, referred to the site as a “YouTube for courses.”  At the moment, MOOC.org is still in its formative stages - if you visit the website you will see a message saying "mooc.org goes live in the first half of 2014. Are you interested in creating or hosting courses on mooc.org? Complete one of the three forms below and let us know how mooc.org fits into your plans. We'll be in touch as we get closer to launch".

Tarlton Law Library Digital Resource

The Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas School of Law has announced the release of a number of digital resources created by Tarlton's staff. The resources chronicle aspects of the history of Texas law and of the University of Texas School of Law, and can be found at the Tarlton Special Collections web site. The following are some of the newest digital collections:
 Texas Constitutions 1824-1876, completely updated and revised in 2013, contains the text of all the organic documents of Texas, including those from the period under Mexican rule and of the Republic of Texas. Also part of the collection are constitutional convention journals and debates and the printing history for each version of the state's constitution.
The Texas Jurists Collection includes over 400 photographs of Texas jurists that were donated to the Tarlton Law Library by Texas Supreme Court Justice Jack Pope. This collection complements the related web site, Justices of Texas, 1836-1986, which features photographs and brief biographies of Texas Supreme Court justices and judges of the Court of Criminal Appeals.
 The World War II News Sheets were created by Helen Hargrave, the University of Texas' Law Librarian from 1940 to 1965. Her goal was to provide information on UT law students, alumni and faculty serving in the military during World War II; the News Sheets, published between March 1943 and August 1945, were central in keeping the close-knit law school community connected during the war.

New! CALI webinars begin Friday Sept. 6

On Friday, Sept. 6, at 3 pm,  Sarah Glassmeyer of CALI will host the first of a series of short - SHORT! 15 minutes! - webinars on CALI tips and tricks. More information including the registration link is here.  The webinar will use Go to Webinar, which allows for screen sharing, easy interaction with the participants and CALI has a license. Recommended for law students, librarians and faculty. 

Chronicle of Higher Ed on library databases

There's an interesting post via the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "The 3 Click Dilemma: are library databases nearing the tipping point of obsolescence?"  The author tells us that he recently had a conversation with a history professor (and library lover) during which he was told that "it’s getting harder for me to get students to use the library— especially the databases— anything beyond three clicks is just too many.”
The article goes on to explore what this evolving attitude towards databases might mean for libraries. 

New: study room reservations

The Barco Law Library is looking forward to a good year.  And with the start of the new year we introduce Study Room Reservations, new for 2013-14. Study rooms are now available by online reservation using an online form.
Some things to know:
You must be a Pitt Law student, faculty or staff to reserve a room
Please use your Pitt email address to make the reservation
Please have your reservation confirmation handy
Individuals can reserve a maximum of one 2 hour slots in any given day
Individuals can reserve a maximum of five 1 hour slots per month
If a room is not reserved it's available on a first come/first served basis
Minimum occupancy of two persons; maximum occupancy for each room listed on the reservation form
Please be courteous and respect others' reservations

ProQuest Congressional webinars

With the school year fast approaching, you might like to brush up your research skills with these useful August webinars from ProQuest Congressional (the links will take you to a registration page for the webinars):
Executive Branch Documents 1789-1932 Wed. 8/7/13 3:00 pm and Wed. 8/21/13 10 am. Content targets the entire range of executive branch publications listed in the authoritative 1909 Checklist, created in 1911 by the U.S. Superintendent of Documents. The 1909 Checklist is the only systematic effort to provide a complete listing of all documents published by the U.S. Government in its first 120 years. Executive Branch Documents 1789-1932 includes all of the 200,000+ executive branch titles listed in the 1909 Checklist that were not included in the U.S. Serial Set, as well as an additional 200,000 titles from 1910-1932. The webinar will cover what the product is, how it relates to the other ProQuest Congressional Digital Collections, and what's in this rich resource.
Reviewing Congressional Basic Fri. 8/9/13 3:00 pm and Fri. 8/23/13 11:00 am
   Congressional Basic is a resource for 1970-present research with content ranging from the Daily Congressional Record, indexing for Reports, Documents, Hearings and Prints (and a lot of full text in there too), and information on Members of Congress ranging from voting records to campaign contributions.
Are You Ready for Reference: Statistical Insight and the Statistical Abstract of the U.S.: Wed. 8/14/13 3:00 pm
Find out how to use Statistical Insight and the Statistical Abstract of the U.S. effectively at the reference desk. Note: there will be a brief overview of the various modules customers might have in Statistical Insight at the beginning of this session.
 Are You Ready for Reference: Congressional Mon. 8/19/13 1pm
Use  ProQuest Congressional to answer ref questions about laws and legislation, as well as find answers related to the many topics that Congress considers. Includes how to use citations, names, and dates to retrieve bills, laws, reports, hearings, and related documents.The database is an effective source for general research in many academic disciplines, in addition to research related to specific legislative proposals and laws.
Legislative Insight: Recent Supreme Court Decisions Fri. 8/30/13  1:30 pm  
Will discuss recent or important Supreme Court opinions that involved research into Congressional documents and legislative materials. Despite well-known disapproval by at least one justice for looking to legislative intent, we'll look at when and why they look at legislative history and how we can use Legislative Insight to do that research.
Using the ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the U.S. Online Edition Thurs. 8/8/13 11:00 am and  Wed. 8/21/13 11:00 am
Questions come across the reference desk on all topics: how many hate crimes were there in 2008? Are there many book clubs in the U.S.? Do you have the GDP for the U.S. for the past ten (or so) years? How many people use facebook? All of these questions can be answered by the new ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States online edition. The webinar will demonstrate how to browse for content, search for content and how to personalize the spreadsheet files available for every single table. We have updated hundreds of tables since the online product was released so we will look at updated tables and learn how ProQuest is archiving past data. 

Lexis Advance tips

You can still do Boolean search in Lexis Advance.  The "Help" menu at the upper right corner of the page has lots of information about working in Advance.  Go to the page "Searching with Lexis Advance" and you will see links to pages where you can learn how to use Search Connectors and Commands, limit your Sources, use Filters, and search Segments.  For Segment searching, there is a very helpful Excel spreadsheet you can download that shows what segments can be searched in which type of documents.  

WestlawNext tips

Here are a couple of tips on WestlawNext that our rep has provided.
1. Printing snippets: You now have the option to print less than an entire document.  It's a bit of a workaround but it does work: Highlight the paragraph(s) or whatever snippets you want to print and Save to a folder. You can then select the snippet in the folder and print it.
2. Uniform Commercial Code State Variation Service: There is a database for the UCC that contains a state-by-state and section-by-section analysis of variations from the official text of the UCC as adopted in each state, called the Uniform Commercial Code State Variation Service published in the UCC Reporting Service (identifier is UCC-VAR). There is a nice template you can use to search with the UCC section number, a state's section number, or by selected states.  

Bloomberg Law news

The CEO of Bloomberg Law sent an email message to subscribers recently, viewable here. In the message he announced that "Bloomberg is taking the next step to deliver better and faster solutions for our clients. Beginning in January 2014, we will join together into a single subsidiary all of our Bloomberg Law legal and business intelligence solutions, as well as Bloomberg BNA's industry-leading legal and regulatory businesses." He adds that "We are committed to making individual users more effective, and our clients' enterprises more profitable. For example, we are exploring how to integrate the BBNA Tax Management Portfolios with the Bloomberg Law DealMaker product to give tax professionals even more powerful tools for serving their clients."
We'll keep you posted.  

FRED database continues to grow

The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank (FRED) database now has more than 140,000 economic time series available, due to the addition of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s Main Economic Indicators. You can check out all the data at the FRED website. The additional data allow users to make cross-country economic comparisons for the 34 OECD-member countries, plus Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the Russian Federation and South Africa. These data include granular employment data by age, status and gender; balance of payments data; monetary aggregates; and compensation. The folks at St. Louis Fed continue to work to make economic data easily accessible, with many options for saving, sharing, and customizing the display. You can email them with requests for other data.

Detroit declares Chapter 9 bankruptcy

Detroit's bankruptcy filing is big news all over the country.  The Office of the United States Courts a very good post titled "When Cities Go Bankrupt" that explains Chapter 9 Bankruptcy with a map and links to more info.
UPDATE: BloombergLaw has an excellent discussion about Detroit's bankruptcy with bankruptcy attorney Harvey Miller.